


Prompt Fight

by sinfulchihuahua0602



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Blood and Violence, Boy King of Hell Sam Winchester, Canon-Typical Violence, M/M, Ruler of Hell Sam Winchester
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-07
Updated: 2020-05-10
Packaged: 2021-02-27 19:42:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 10,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22601173
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sinfulchihuahua0602/pseuds/sinfulchihuahua0602
Summary: A collection of short stories written according to prompts.
Relationships: Castiel/Sam Winchester
Kudos: 17





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is a collection of short "prompt fills," which come from a thing on my Discord server called prompt fights. One prompt is given and the rest can write fills for that specific prompt. These are my personal fills, and most if not all will be boyking!Sam because that is the server theme.
> 
> These fills don't have any backstory other than what is mentioned in the writing, and while Sam will almost always be King of Hell or something related, other characters will not be as consistent and may not be mentioned at all in some fills.
> 
> The fills will not have Wincest in any way, but there will be Sastiel and possibly some Destiel. Dean will not always be in every fill and neither will Castiel. There may be some random original side characters.
> 
> **Some fills will be very dark.**

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _prompt_
> 
> _The king is kind, and understanding. But just as easily as he gives, he takes away. And when he takes away, he takes away everything._
> 
> *****warnings: this fill is dark Sastiel*****

Castiel had been remade several times.

At first, it had been by God himself. He had been remade when Lucifer had exploded him, and he had been remade countless other times. It wasn't a new sensation to him anymore; it was kind of like sleeping. He floated in endless, dreamless darkness, and then he woke up wherever he had been revived, feeling fresh and clean and _powerful_. He didn't really know when it would happen, so he lived as if any day could be his last - which, in this life, it could.

But he always remembered it, he always remembered _before_ as if he had simply been sleeping.

Until now.

Cas stood in the halls of Hell; in the throne room, to be exact. He couldn't see much in the dim firelight, but he didn't have to. He knew he'd fucked up - and he'd fucked up something that _really_ wasn't supposed to be fucked up. For the first time, Cas was afraid of his future, of what Sam would do to him. There were things much worse than death, Cas knew this, and he knew that Sam had more than enough experience to get creative if he needed to.

Cas also knew that he loved the King of Hell. He'd loved him when Sam had first taken the throne, and he loved him now, when he was deciding on Cas's punishment. It was a delicate balance between the two of them; Sam did love him, and he was lenient and understanding, but even Cas knew his patience only stretched so far, and he had done more than stretched it; he'd snapped it and then shredded the pieces.

Sam was currently sitting on the throne, legs crossed and posture relaxed as ever, but his eyes were fixed unblinkingly on Cas, who knew that look all too well. He knew the mind that was running, trying to decide how Cas should pay for his monumental mistakes.

Sam moved suddenly, legs uncrossing as he stood in a fluid motion, face emotionless. Cas darted his eyes down as he walked closer, stopping two steps away from him and tilting his chin up with one finger, the slight contact feeling as if it was searing Cas's skin. He met Sam's hazel eyes and found sympathy reflected back; the question of his punishment was playing in a loop in the back of his mind and fear rose up with it.

"You understand why I have to do this," Sam said, voice soft. Deceiving, Cas thought, and then he wished that Sam could speak that softly to him again, but in very different circumstances. He pushed the thought away and gave a slight nod. Sam held his eyes and Cas shifted before he turned away, pacing a few steps back.

"I can't let them see that I am weak. No exceptions," Sam said, turning suddenly back to face Cas. "I know you have been remade before, so it should be nothing new."

Cas looked sharply up at Sam, wondering what the punishment was in being remade. His brow furrowed in confusion and Sam tilted his head, giving Cas a smile that was filled with something almost like pity.

"You're wondering how that's a punishment," he said softly. Cas was still, not replying, and Sam took a few steps forward, closer to him. "You won't remember it. You'll be brand new. I'm not taking away your life, I'm taking away _everything_. Your memories, all of your past thoughts. Your feelings."

Cas tilted his head, instantly thinking of the worst possible scenario, and something in Sam's face told him that this was the worst-case scenario. "My - feelings?" he asked, stilted, and Sam nodded.

"Yes. All of them, even those you have for me." He paused, eyes flicking down as if regretful, before looking back up. "I don't want to, but I hope you can rebuild our relationship in the next life."

Cas opened his mouth to speak, to say something, anything, to try to make sense of the panic rising up in him and the sudden, frantic thought that _he didn't want this, this wasn't supposed to happen_ , but Sam's hand was raising and he felt two cool fingers touch his temple and then everything went black.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _prompt_
> 
> _{_
> 
> _"Monster" is derived from the Latin noun monstrum, "divine portent," itself formed on the root of the verb monere, "to warn." It came to refer to living things of anomalous shape or structure, or to fabulous creatures like the sphinx who were composed of strikingly incongruous parts, because the ancients considered the appearance of such beings to be a sign of some impending supernatural event._
> 
> _Monsters, like angels, functioned as messengers and heralds of the extraordinary. They served to announce impending revelation, saying, in effect,_ **"Pay attention; something of profound importance is happening."**
> 
> }
> 
> _tell me about Hell's monstrous boy king and what message he brings or what cataclysms are heralded by his arrival!_

It had been one demon, at first.

Dean held him in the devil's trap in an abandoned warehouse in town and used every torture method he knew, every method Alastair had taught him while he was in Hell. He asked one question: _where was Sam?_ He got no answer, not a real one anyway. Dean was tempted to just kill him then and there, but suddenly the demon's attitude changed. Dean asked again.

"You don't want to know," the demon said. "You should run while you still can."

Dean refused to run, of course. Nothing would stop him from finding Sam, not even this demon that wanted him to flee while he could. He ended up killing him. He wasn't useful.

>>><<<

Two months later and Dean couldn't find any demons anywhere.

He'd spent six weeks looking, but every demon he came across fled before he could even get close to them. They had been getting scarcer over the course of the two months, and Dean thought they were a lot like birds fleeing before a thunderstorm.

Come to think of it, he hadn't been seeing much of anything lately. The monsters had all disappeared; he hadn't taken a case in weeks and it was making Dean uneasy. It wasn't just the demons fleeing like birds before a storm; it was the monsters, and the spirits too. But he wouldn't stop until he found Sam.

>>><<<

Dean found Sam three weeks later, but it wasn't in the way he wanted.

Sam smiled, stood before him in a velvet black suit which was too clean for the dirty warehouse. Around him, demons were assembled, and they all looked at Dean with something akin to pity as he tried facing down the King of Hell.

"Sam, this isn't you," Dean pleaded, ignoring the soft laughs from the demons nearby. He couldn't ignore, though, how Sam's head tilted a fraction, reminding Dean of a predator sizing up prey and sending fear spiking through him.

"But this _is_ me, Dean. You're just not willing to accept it. You never have been," Sam replied, voice as soft as Dean remembered but still holding an edge of sharpness that hadn't been there before. His eyes weren't Sam's either - they were something distinctly _other_ , even though they were the same kaleidoscope of hazel and green and blue that Dean had seen all his life, achingly familiar and yet so dangerously different.

Sam took a few steps forward, closer to Dean. "I tolerated you for three months, but you wouldn't give up. I warned you, Dean. Like birds fleeing from a thunderstorm. Yet you refused to listen." He shook his head. "I always wondered what would get you killed first - your loyalty or your stubbornness."

Dean couldn't believe this was happening. He still refused to believe that Sam didn't want to be saved, that this was what his brother had become. He shook his head, feeling tears rising, and tried again. "No," he said weakly. "Sam, no. This isn't - this isn't you."

Sam smiled pityingly. "I warned you," he repeated, and the last thing Dean saw was the twist of Sam's wrist, followed by a white-hot pain, before everything went dark.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _prompt_
> 
> _Not all demons are up-to-date on modern Earth culture. When Sam visits from Hell for a brief trip, the demons that accompany him prove to be more annoying than they are helpful. Obviously, they have questions about nearly everything. Whether or not Sam answers them… is your choice._

Sam found Hell's library two weeks after he became King. He didn't think Hell would even _have_ a library, but it turns out to be massive and actually very well-lit and well-organized. He spends hours there at first, and then he returns again and again, drawn to the shelves and shelves of books on occult lore and mythology. His demons don't question him, until he starts cross-referencing them with books from Earth, because Hell's library is outdated and though the information from writers of old is sometimes one of a kind, most of the time it really is outdated and Sam wants to start reorganizing the library. He was considering giving it official staff, too, since the only demon he saw doing anything to clean the library was an older, tired one who didn't much care for torture anymore and Sam wanted this place, of all places in Hell, to be preserved.

The first time he brought back a stack of books from Earth, his demons didn't say anything, but he could feel their questions in the air like a thick fog. It only got worse from there; every time he went to Earth and came back with books, or a laptop, or anything else, he can feel their stares on him, and he feels a slight prick of annoyance. He doesn't answer them, not at first, not until one of the younger demons finds him at his desk in the library. He's not surprised, since he always has demons hovering around him curiously now, slipping between the shelves as demons do, only mildly impressed at the fact that this one had the courage to actually confront him.

She walks up to him shyly, almost innocently, and Sam wonders how a human soul twisted into a demon can retain any sort of innocence, but he looks over at her and she visibly flinches. He puts it down to fear and doesn't say anything as she glances at the various books he has open around him and the notes neatly written in a notebook he'd brought from Earth. It takes a few seconds before he sees her take a breath and then speak, her voice quiet and timid.

"What are those books?"

Sam gives her a kind smile, trying to reassure her that he may be ruthless at times, but he wasn't unfair or merciless. He still had a piece of humanity, a shard that he clung to in his worst times and which was all he needed to feel human at his best. She relaxes slightly, safe in the assumption that her King won't kill her then and there, and his voice is soft when he speaks. It reminds him of years past, when he would explain to Dean the lore he'd found, and it's times like these when he curses his humanity and the ache in his heart.

She listens intently as he explains what they are and what he's doing - currently, he's making an index of every book in the library and every book he'd like to add, then he wants to move on to a new organization system. He knows it'll take him years, but he has more free time than he expected as King and losing himself in research and organization is more than enough to fill it.

It takes fifteen minutes as him and the younger demon talk before he realizes that a small crowd has assembled, floating at the edges of the shelves around him, but leaving a circle around his desk where the shelves end as if he has a force-field. Sam doesn't say anything, and he hides his smile, but he directs his voice just slightly outward and turns the books he holds up so they can see as well.

It takes another twenty before they slowly start to drift closer, gathering around his desk, and then another hour before Sam has explained his plans for the library and he has the help of sixty-something demons, all scattering throughout the library as he gives them instructions on what books to find, how to cross-reference, libraries on Earth to retrieve other books from (and not to possess a live host), and various other tasks. The following grows, to somewhere around two hundred over the next year, and Sam learns the names of most of the demons there, makes friends with them. They become more comfortable around him, talking with him as an almost-equal, and Sam finds himself looking forward to spending time with his little community of demons who love knowledge like he does.

The project is finished eight years later, and Sam doesn't need to tell any of the demons about how the library should be kept up. He tries to, but one of the demons simply gives him a knowing smile and leads him to the library, which has been completely reformed and is no longer the cold, intimidating place Sam found years ago. It's filled with demons organizing and reading and simply relaxing in the chairs scattered around, and the topics covered aren't only about occult lore and mythology. Now, the library is a place to learn about Earth's culture and humans, monsters, spirits, and everything in between.

Sam lets himself smile, thanks the demon, and relishes in the fact that they're all equals in the library as he picks out a few books and finds a chair to sit at.

He always wondered if humans really lost _all_ of their humanity when they were twisted into demons.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt:  
> They couldn't even tell it was Sam.
> 
> **warning: this fill has Lucifer and mentions of castration.**

_ Two hundred and eighty-one days. Sam repeated it in his head; he had been here for two hundred and eighty-one days. He leaned back against the walls of the cage, staring blankly at the wall across from him. There was no point in studying it; he’d memorized its pattern at seventy-three days. _

_ Lucifer was currently fiddling with a knife he was trying to build from scratch from pieces he summoned into the cage. He couldn’t use any of his powers against the cage, but he could summon certain objects. Sam knew because the objects he summoned were usually blades and he could attest to how real those were. Lucifer had occupied himself with building this blade for the past eighteen days, saying that it was supposed to be more painful than any other blade he’d used on Sam and that he was excited to play with it. Sam didn’t reply; he couldn’t. Lucifer had sewn his lips shut. _

_ His right hand was picking idly at a scab on his thigh; it hurt, but he didn’t really notice it. It didn’t compare with the pain he normally felt, and if it bled, Sam had forgotten what he looked like when he wasn’t bleeding. It didn’t matter. Lucifer would hurt him again anyways. _

Two hundred and eighty-one days. Dean glanced at the calendar on the wall, then back at Sam - or what was left of him, anyway. Death hadn’t been able to put Sam’s soul back in, but it couldn’t be left out, so it had been put in the panic room. It took the form of Sam’s body, except a bit ghostly pale and covered in more bruises and cuts than Dean could count, and Dean had been watching over it for over eight months. He’d also been dealing with a soulless Sam for eight months and he was reaching the end of his patience with both of them.

Dean pushed the sharpening stone over the blade of his knife as carefully as he could, trying to minimize the noise so as not to scare the soul - though it didn’t do much, anyway, other than stare blankly at the wall. Dean’s eyes took it in and noticed it was scratching at a pale scab on its right thigh; he sighed and walked over to it.

_ Lucifer stood up, setting his blade down and sauntering closer to Sam. Sam looked up - two hundred and eighty-one days - and fought back tears as Lucifer reached down and pulled his right hand away from his thigh, yanking him harshly up to his feet. _

Dean softly grazed his fingers over the soul’s wrist, feeling the slight chill, and used two fingers on the inside of his wrist to guide the hand away from the scab. The soul whimpered and pulled its knees up to its chest, leaning away from Dean, who pulled his hand away, staring sadly at the soul.

_ Lucifer started dragging Sam towards the center of the cage, summoning a rack and throwing Sam onto it. He tried to yell, but his lips were sewn shut and white-hot pain burned through his face instead. He felt Lucifer’s hands roughly flip him over, then pull one wrist up to one end of the rack and Sam couldn’t even whimper as he felt the cuffs click tightly around his wrists and ankles. _

_ Lucifer snapped his fingers and the thread on Sam’s lips was gone, leaving his lips burning with pain. He gasped, eyes following Lucifer as he summoned his traditional weapon cart and picked a scalpel up from it, inspecting it. _

Dean gave up on the soul and walked back over to his chair, picking up the knife he was sharpening and examining the edge. He looked over at the soul and couldn’t even force himself to smile. It looked like Sam, sure, but all the light and life was gone. It was a hollow shell of what used to be Sam, his brother who had a smile like the sun and a heart of gold. Lucifer had taken those things from him, and Dean cursed the archangel every day for it.

_ Lucifer smiled at Sam, who arched as much as he could on the rack, fear spiking through him - and then he wondered why he was afraid anymore. Two hundred and eighty-one days. _

Dean picked up the sharpening stone and took his gaze away from the small, huddled form of not-Sam, walking over to the panic room door and stopping. He picked up the Sharpie set on a folding table and drew an X in the calendar square for today’s date.

_ Lucifer traced the scalpel across Sam’s bare skin, dipping between his legs - he’d been castrated at one hundred and twenty-two days, Sam remembered vividly - and smiling with delight at Sam’s sharp intake of breath and how he stilled completely, shaking with the effort of not moving because he’d learned the hard way how a slight movement could make an “accidental” cut. Lucifer then pulled the blade away and jabbed it point-first deep into his thigh. Sam threw his head back and screamed into the fiery, unfeeling depths of Hell, his voice joining with thousands of others in a haunting chorus. _

Two hundred and eighty-one days.

_ Two hundred and eighty-one days. _


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _prompt_
> 
> _Why become a god if you can’t avenge yourself on the way up?_
> 
> *****warnings: Lucifer*****

Castiel lied. He wasn’t the one who pulled Sam up from Hell, Sam was.

It was bloody and messy and savage. Lucifer was screaming from inside Sam, buried beneath thousands of eternities of inky-black darkness and searing rage. Every cut and bruise and burn on Sam’s body pulsed with white-hot pain and yet he dragged himself up. He ripped the archangel’s wings out from behind him and forced them to carry him up, the feathers burning and blackening with every flap in Hell’s scorching heat.

There were demons that stood against him; their ashes rained down on the lower circles of Hell. Sam was burning and freezing all at once; he was being remade, inch by bloody inch. He tore Lucifer’s divinity from him and relished in the screams as he took it for himself, comparing them to the ones Lucifer had pulled from his mouth for so many eternities. He dragged his soul along with him, forcing the shredded mess into his body, leaving his burnt handprints on it.

When Sam broke earth, it wasn’t in a flash of blinding light or a heavenly glow. He pulled himself up, hand by bloody hand. Lucifer’s wings dragged behind him, the feathers getting twisted and mangled and the archangel screaming inside him still. Sam paid no mind; he stood up on bloody legs and inhaled his first breath of fresh air. He tore Lucifer’s wings out completely, letting the burned, bloody mass of feathers fall to the ground behind him.

He turned his power inwards, at the mass of Lucifer’s grace burning bright inside him, twisting in pain, and held it tight in one mental hand. It stilled, Sam feeling the first spike of fear he’d ever felt from the archangel, and there was a moment of terrified silence before Sam  _ squeezed. _

He had been in the cage for a year, he had been tortured by Lucifer for over five hundred thousand eternities, and Sam put every ounce of his anger he’d built up into his power. Lucifer writhed and screamed in agony, pushing desperately against Sam’s skin as he was slowly set on fire, but Sam was the cage and he had learned from Lucifer himself how to have iron control.

“You taught me control,” Sam said in his mind to Lucifer, who simply screamed. “Remember that day?” he asked harshly.

“I remember,” Sam said quietly. “I remember it all. ‘Don’t make any noise, Sammy, or I’ll cut deeper.’ It took me eighty eternities for me to learn, didn’t it? And I did learn. I learned how to make pain into energy” - he squeezed tighter and Lucifer screamed louder - “and how to control everything I did, everything I said.”

He smiled, darkly. “You forced me to learn how to control my mind, because if I didn’t you’d cut into that too. And my soul, my voice, my body - this is all your fault, you know.”

He loosened his grip a little, hearing Lucifer panting softly in his mind with pain, the grace twisting and writhing in his hand. “You taught me how to bide my time and  _ wait.  _ Wait until my opportunity came, and oh, it did. Five thousand eternities of rage and pain, all gathered up, and you thought the whole time you were breaking me. Every cut, every burn, everything you did to me only added to  _ this.” _

He started squeezing again, feeling Lucifer’s grace dwindling as it burned and his screams echoing in his mind before they quieted and Sam’s hand was empty. He drew his power out from inside of him and filled the gaping hole left by Lucifer with the demonic energy, letting it course through him like fire in his veins. He inhaled, the air stinging and burning as it went down, as Sam was reborn in fire and ice and darkness.

The power thrummed through him, pulsing in time with his heart, burning against his wounds as it healed them. Massive, velvet-black wings unfurled behind him, hauntingly beautiful in their darkness, the tips of the feathers still glowing red with the fire they’d been forged in. Sam laughed with the sheer bliss of it; he was out of the cage and powerful and he had a lifetime of pain to administer justice for. He knew he wasn’t an angel, or a demon, or even Nephilim. He was something  _ other,  _ infinitely darker and more powerful, and damn if he didn’t use it to his full advantage. His fingertips sizzled with heat and power, the anger he’d built up during his time in the cage roiling and surging inside him.

Sam flew.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _prompt_
> 
> _Sam has grown up in a very religious environment. He’s devoted, he goes to church, he prays. He knows that God is with him, because he listens to his prayers. But as Sam grows older, he realizes it’s not God that’s been listening. And he realizes that he’s not asking - he’s been ordering, and his loyal servants would never deny their King._
> 
> *****warning: religious blasphemy-ish?*****

Sam had never been comfortable holding rosary beads. His hands always seemed to sting after and the wood seemed to bite into his skin even though it was sanded perfectly smooth. 

It happened with his crucifix necklace, too. The silver seemed to burn against his neck, the crucifix’s fire seeming to make its way down his body from where it lay in the hollow of his throat. 

Praying was different. Even as his skin seemed to be too small for him and he was painfully aware of every line of holy silver or wood against it, prayer didn’t do that. Not usually, at least. The words only tasted like ash when he said something specifically religious, such as God or Heaven. Other times, the words seemed to ring around him, echoing silently around the church and making Sam feel like someone was actually listening. 

Sam was devoted. He went to church every day and prayed as he should, yet he couldn’t recite the Lord’s Prayer. He knew he should be able to, but he stumbled over the phrases and the words felt like glass cutting his throat. He recited it anyway, because if God didn’t want him then he’d fight for his own redemption. 

He’d asked why several times. Why did it hurt, why did he seem to be the only one who had this, why did he feel better saying the words  _ Satan _ and  _ evil _ and  _ demon _ than he did saying any religious name. He never got an answer - those were the prayers that whoever was listening ( _ God was listening, Sam told himself _ ) wouldn’t answer. 

Until now. 

He had prayed and asked  _ why _ and now he was standing in a pew looking at a woman with dark hair and darker eyes, smirking at him. She stood casually, hands in her jean pockets and looking like she knew something he didn’t. Which, she probably did, Sam thought. 

“Who are you?” Sam asked, because she’d appeared out of nowhere and there was no requirement for formalities. His mind told him  _ demon  _ in a hissing whisper, and he felt something stirring in him because of her presence, but she hadn’t said anything so logically he shouldn’t know who she was already. Not as certainly as he did, anyway, not like the coiling, smirking, confident thing shifting in his mind and the way his body straightened, certain of his position over her. Which made no sense, the logical part of Sam’s mind told him, yet that part was quickly losing. 

She smiled. “I thought you’d already know that, Sam,” she said, and Sam again got the feeling that she knew something very important that he didn’t and it was bothering him. The new thing inside him hissed at him to demand it from her, to take what he wanted because she was less than him and he had the power here -

He ignored the whispers because they made no sense, he told himself, and the whispers laughed, saying that he knew they made perfect sense and he just didn’t want to accept it, he knew exactly what he was and he was being stubborn. He ignored that too, fighting desperately against this thing rising inside him, coiling and striking against the suffocation of the church’s holy air and Sam’s walls of devoted religious belief that were slowly crumbling. 

Sam felt like he couldn’t breathe. The church air usually felt too hot, too humid, but this was worse. It was choking off his words, and Sam had to take a deep breath even though it felt like glass down his throat. “I don’t… I have no idea who you are,” he said, and he felt the lie in his words though he had really never met this woman before. 

She smiled. “I’m Ruby,” she replied, and the thing in Sam rebelled at this - she was lying, trying to deceive him and that he should punish her for that. He ignored it, only paid attention to the lies part and the soft whisper in his mind that said  _ Proserpine.  _

“No it’s not,” he said. She raised one eyebrow, mildly surprised yet Sam still felt like she knew something he didn’t. 

“Okay, then what is it?” she asked, in the way that someone would ask a child a question knowing that they didn’t know the correct answer. The thing inside Sam hissed with irritation at this -  _ insubordination,  _ it supplied, but Sam forced it down and called it  _ ignorance.  _ He tried to ignore how the whispers laughed again, saying that they were one and the same and Sam was too soft to do what he knew he had to. 

“You’re going by your vessel’s name, Ruby, but your true name is Proserpine,” he said, and the name echoed around the church, curling tendrils of darkness contained in the holiness of the church’s walls. Sam tried to ignore how his skin didn’t burn when he said the name and how it rolled off his tongue as easily as God’s name never had. Ruby shifted a step back, fear flashing in her eyes for a split second before it was smoothed over into a calm mask. 

“So you already know a demon’s true name. So what?” she said, trying to hide the discomfort in her voice. 

He shrugged. “I read about demon’s true names. The right person can control a demon completely with their true name. Coercion, possession, magic. If someone knows a demon’s true name, then they’re screwed.” Ruby’s eyes flicked down and Sam followed them as they glanced back up. He took a step forward. “Am I the right person?”

Sam ignored the soft hisses in his head of  _ yes, yes, this is exactly who you are, you are the one who controls them.  _ He focused instead on how Ruby didn’t reply, and didn’t notice the way the hisses curled around his thoughts, the slow, illogical anger rising in him. His voice got harder and he suddenly  _ took.  _

“ _ Proserpine.” _

Her head snapped up to look at him, a sliver of amber flashing around her pupils before disappearing. She nodded. “You are the right person, Sam,” she said, then her voice became looser, more relaxed. She walked forward, between the pews and towards Sam. “You’ve always felt…  _ wrong  _ being in a church, right? Everything burns, your body feels like it’s too small for you. Even the air seems to rebel against your presence here,” she said, not a question but Sam still nodded as if it was one. 

He ignored how close she was and how the burning in his body seemed to calm even more the closer she was, the air around him cool and his breaths not burning his throat. He looked down at her. “Why can’t I say the Lord’s Prayer?” he asked, and His name felt like holy fire in his mouth as it always did, and the whispers switched to hisses and something struck against his body like a snake, fire running through him and fading. 

She laughed. “You’re praying for the wrong king. You’re the other side of the coin, Sam. You’re not the prayed for, you’re the prayed to. Don’t you know what you are by now?”

He glanced down, nodded, felt the thing inside him purr at this admission. “King of Hell,” he whispered, and the air around him seemed to twist and curl, snapping against his skin, every holy part of the church rebelling against him. 

She put her hands against his chest and looked up at him. He looked down, meeting her eyes; they were earnest and sincere. “Why pray  _ to  _ the king when you  _ are  _ the king?”

Sam had three realizations then. One, the thing inside him wasn’t just inside him, it  _ was  _ him. Two, this was who he was and he couldn’t escape it, so he let the thing he’d been feeling since the beginning of this meeting flood through him, icy cold and contrasting sharply with the holy fire of the church air. 

Three, he was a walking blasphemy and that, somehow, was more than okay with him. 

He looked up and there was a congregation of people standing in front of him.  _ Demon,  _ his mind whispered, names flashing through his brain as he looked at each one. He smirked, hand going up to his crucifix necklace and enjoying the fire that spread through his body, a cruel sense of satisfaction running through him at his rebellion against the church he’d prayed to for so long. His eyes flicked down to Ruby, who was looking at him with something akin to pride and adoration. 

“How do I start?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ruby's true name in this fill, _Proserpine_ , comes from a fic on this website called A Threefold Path to Redemption. It's another name for Persephone and I thought that the name fit well for Ruby.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _prompt_
> 
> _The Legend of Sam Winchester:  
>  Revered, feared, long gone or just tearing up earth? Write something about how other hunters/demons/angels talk about Sam behind his back. It can be during his time as a hunter, as boy king, as a special child...  
> Essentially: What do demons & hunters write about Sam on bathroom walls? :D  
> Challenge: It's all from someone else's POV, never from Sam's_

The stories were all wrong, Ella thought.

She’d only been in the hunting community for three years and she knew plenty about the Winchesters. The stories that circulated around them were just as mythical as the brothers were - all rumors and speculation. The only true, known fact was that you didn’t touch them, you didn’t even look at one of them wrong, or you might find yourself at the end of the other’s blade. That was the only thing that was proven, or could be proven, since the Winchesters never showed up at any sort of hunter gathering and their father had never been willing to share much about them when he was alive.

There was one other proven fact as well, but no one was willing to talk about that for fear of it coming true. The hunting community was perfectly happy to stick to the original stories, where Dean was all witty remarks and fiery glares and Sam was the bold, clever law student with the smile like sunlight. They didn’t want to think about what Sam was - the ones who did, and had acted on it… well, everyone knew what had happened to Gordon Walker. For the few hunters that did meet Sam Winchester, it was enough to focus on Sam’s kind words and soft smile and ignore the dark thing they knew ran through his veins.

It worked backwards for Ella. She knew enough about Sam that she was positive she’d be safe with him no matter what blood he had; so when she met him, and hunted with him, and the only thing she felt was rising anxiety and fear, it left her confused. His hand was too familiar around a blade, movements too fluid, and it felt far too right to see him standing over the corpse of a vampire, blood dripping from the blade in his hand and pooling around his feet. And his smile when he said goodbye was downright unsettling; it was tilted wrong, and it didn’t quite reach his eyes - or if it did, it was a thin film over the real feelings and Ella wasn’t sure she wanted to know what was underneath.

Sam Winchester reminded her of an old Bible verse - the book of Daniel, she thought. Daniel had been having visions, and he said that he saw four beasts in his vision. _“The first was like a lion and had eagles' wings. Then as I looked its wings were plucked off, and it was lifted up from the ground and made to stand on two feet like a man, and the mind of a man was given to it.” (Daniel 7:4)._ She didn’t know why he reminded her of that verse, but she didn’t like it and she knew that she’d never try working with Sam Winchester again if she could help it.

//

Ella knew the stories were wrong, but she wasn’t quite sure exactly _how_ wrong.

She wasn’t sure until now, as Sam stood in front of her and that smile of his was now razor-sharp, unsettlingly familiar. This time, the smile reached his eyes - it reached his eyes that burned molten gold, and it reached his power, which flowed like honey over her skin, slow and suffocating and leaving her helpless as he took a step forward. 

Her breaths came short and she felt panic setting in, thrashing uselessly against her invisible silken bonds, tears welling up quickly. Sam’s smile faded and he tilted his head, thumb brushing lightly over her cheek to wipe away the first tear. His eyes flicked to her and gold was all she could see, that horrifying burning shade, before she felt something weaving in her mind, gently pushing down the rising fear and panic.

Ella’s eyes widened in horror, but even that was pushed down, and she was not-panicking; her breaths were calmed down and she was still, though her mind was racing with a torrent of fresh fear. Absently, she thought she was very much like a mouse being played with by a cat, and that thought set her mind off again because the mouse almost never survived.

Sam’s voice was soft, slipping like honey between her defenses, and dammit, she’d only worked with the Winchesters once but there was something about Sam that was naturally calming; he knew how to get what he wanted. She found herself relaxing even without the heavy, threatening slide of his power over her emotions. “Shh,” he whispered. “We’re not even at the best part yet. I can’t have you panicking on me, now can I?”

That set off not-alarm in Ella’s mind, thoughts flipping back online even as his power slid over her body, pulling her heart rate down and her breathing steady. He smiled at her and she almost relaxed, before she felt her heart rate drop lower. Her eyes widened as she felt her air being cut off - or, not cut off exactly, because she could still breathe, but she couldn’t get any air in when she did.

“It’s interesting what you learn in college,” Sam said quietly. Ella could barely hear him over her body’s desperate attempts to kick to survival mode; her breathing was forced steady even as her heart rate kept dropping, a few beats every second, and her thoughts were running wild and panicked. Sam kept going.

“I took a medical course at Stanford. Didn’t teach me much for my law degree, I simply thought it’d be interesting. And oh, it was,” he said, turning to her, a small smile on his face, eyes still burning that unholy gold. He walked forward. “Do you know what it taught me?” he asked.

Ella was unable to reply, because her heart rate was still dropping and she was still not-panicking, but Sam kept going anyway, voice as soft as ever, even as her vision blurred around her as the dizziness set in and her muscles weakened from her place pinned against the wall. 

“The lowest heart rate ever recorded was 26 beats per minute,” he said. “Anything below that is most likely fatal, and if it’s not, well…” He smiled. “I can easily make it that way.”

Ella wondered what heart rate she was at right now, to which Sam replied and she flinched at his abruptness.

“45 beats per minute. Not quite there, but we have time, don’t we?” he asked, and Ella suddenly saw him clearly. She knew why he reminded her of that Bible verse from the book of Daniels; she took the time to analyze it even as she felt her heart rate dropping steadily and somewhere in her mind she was still panicking.

The verse said that the beast had lost its wings, but Ella doubted that. She saw the wings now, shadowy and night-black, rising from Sam’s back and flaring outward in a bid for freedom. The stories said that Sam was bold, willing to flee from his family to attend law school, but Ella saw nothing of the boldness in his wings now. They were flared outward in a challenge, a dare to anyone who came close to try to take him down. They were dangerous, not bold, matching his sharp eyes and the seemingly calm drag of his power over her body.

She saw the lion in him too, but he had never left the predatory gait behind. He was still a lion prowling on four legs, the unholy gold in his eyes coloring his fur, mind sharp with the knowledge of what he was and how to use it. Sam may have been the youngest brother, but he was never anything less than Dean was. He was more, more than Dean had ever been or could ever be; he was all gold fire and keen intelligence, with a smile that had never been like sunlight, but was more like a knife that you didn’t know was sharp until you’d already cut yourself on it and were bleeding.

Ella realized this, and then she realized that Sam must have numbed the pain, because suddenly he was two steps in front of her and speaking deceptively softly. 

“Where do you think you’ll go in the afterlife?” he asked, that smile-like-a-knife on his face again. “I’d prefer for you to go to Hell - that mind of yours is very interesting and I’d be happy to have all of eternity to pick through it, but I can’t choose where you go. That’ll be all up to you.”

He turned towards her again from where he’d turned around and paced away, now walking quickly forward until he was two steps away from her. “So, Ella, have you been good?”

She didn’t have a chance to give any indication of replying before she felt the heavy, honeyed slide of his power vanish and the full weight of her imminent heart failure slammed into her. She was breathing fast, too fast now, because she was panicking and about to die and her body was panicking too; she couldn’t get enough air in, and holy _fuck_ organ failure hurt, white-hot pain flaring throughout her entire body from where she was still pinned. Black danced at the edges of her vision, rapidly closing in, and then her vision burned gold, unholy gold, as Sam’s voice filtered distantly in from the outside.

“Guess we’ll have to find out,” he said. 

Ella’s last sight was of burning gold, and her last thought was that _the stories were all wrong._


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _prompt_
> 
> _Stanford era, Brady's POV as the demon inside him controls his body, takes over his life and tries to manipulate Sam_

It had started with a slip of the tongue, the slightest change in tone and something slithering in his thoughts like oil, heavy and suffocating.  _ See you later  _ became  _ see you at 10  _ and Brady had some intention of doing something. There was a purpose to the words now, but as Brady tried to focus on it, it fell away like water and left Brady feeling like he was missing something, watching Sam’s retreating back as he ascended the stairs to the house.

The second time, it was his body that betrayed him. He had found the knife under Sam’s pillow when he was visiting and he was going to put it back, he was, but the same black, oily substance slid over his body and cold metal pressed against his back as he slid it in his jeans. Brady tried to fight it, it was wrong for Sam to have a knife but it was even more wrong for Brady to take it from him if the guy was a bit paranoid. The oily thing slid over his thoughts now, soothing and whispering that  _ it was all right, everything would be fine in the end.  _ Brady kept the knife.

The small instances kept piling up. Brady was constantly paranoid that he’d do something to hurt Sam eventually, since he could lose control at any time. He tried to stay away from Sam and break off the friendship, but the thing made his legs move forward to sit beside Sam and forced his voice to be amiable and friendly. Brady felt like he was under an invisible guillotine, threatened by something that wasn’t even there, so he did what the thing was wordlessly demanding and kept his friendship up with Sam.

The glass wall appeared two months in. Sam was visiting his house and suddenly Brady felt the familiar oily slide over his thoughts and body, but this time he was pulling the knife from his waistband and making a cut on his wrist. Red bloomed from it and he held his wrist out to Sam, who looked confused and a bit scared, backing away from him. Sam was saying something about  _ that was his knife,  _ and  _ Brady what are you doing,  _ but the thing was controlling him and Brady was watching from behind a glass wall. He was holding his wrist out, pleading, asking, enticing Sam to drink his blood.  _ Demon blood,  _ he called it. Sam said he wasn’t a vampire, that this was wrong, but the night ended with not-Brady’s wrist pressed against Sam’s lips forcefully before pulling away, only for Sam to pull it back and a satisfied smile forming on not-Brady’s face.

After the demon blood incident, Brady started learning names. Names of everyone who stopped by Sam’s house when Jess wasn’t there, while Brady was almost getting used to the flash of black in their eyes and the red circling Sam’s mouth. Not-Brady was certainly satisfied, because Brady could feel his satisfaction slithering through his mind beyond the wall, a small smirk on his face and his blood on Sam’s face almost as much as the other demons’ blood. Brady was helpless to do anything but watch; he’d tried slamming on the wall and he’d ended up spending a week drowning in his own mind. He learned that it was a courtesy that the thing even let him stay awake.

It took three months after the wall formed for Brady’s vision to narrow. Not-Brady was feeding Sam the blood almost constantly now; they had been training his powers for the past four weeks and Sam’s appetite was increasing constantly. The thing - no, the  _ demon _ , Brady had learned - was keeping his body alive, but Brady was suffering behind the wall; he spent most of his time dizzy and lightheaded from lack of blood, barely aware of himself, let alone the demon possessing him. He thought that maybe dying would be better than spending his life trapped in his own mind.

Nine months, and Brady was dying. He knew enough about himself that he was losing too much blood, too quickly, and his body wasn’t going to be able to hold out much longer. The demon knew it, too, the oily slide slow and lethargic beyond the wall. Sam didn’t only drink the blood; he was taking a little bit of the demon’s essence with it, infused into the vessel’s blood, and he had been taking it constantly from this demon for all eight months. Brady tried talking to the demon, telling him that they were both going to die if it kept this up, but it only whispered soothing, wordless things to him until he slipped beneath the waves. His last thought before he drowned was that the demon was willing to die for Sam, to reach that goal Brady always sensed beyond the wall, and neither of them were making it out of this alive.

Twelve months, and Brady was pulled from the ice-cold water, once again seeing from behind the mental wall. The demon’s substance was like smoke, wispy in his consciousness, but there was that same sense of  _ more  _ that made it motivated to keep going, to reach that goal it wanted so desperately. They weren’t anywhere Brady knew; it was dark and cold, lit by torchlight, and the surroundings were unfamiliar. They were moving fast, Sam ahead of them, but he was wearing something unfamiliar and he radiated power. His movements were graceful, fluid; predatory, Brady thought suddenly. They turned a corner and through the blur of his vision, Brady thought he saw a throne, someone unfamiliar sitting on it. Contempt flooded through the demon and, by extension, Brady, until it changed to satisfaction and he felt both of them fading again. He saw Sam in front of them; turning, sitting on the throne, blood splattered on his clothes; and then they were kneeling and fading fast. Brady yelled at the demon, telling him that they were going to die, but he felt the black waves lapping over his words and the same soothing, wordless nothings that the demon was whispering to him. He panicked; the waves were like oil, heavy and suffocating and Brady knew he was really going to drown this time. The demon ignored him, shoving him under the waves even as he went down himself, and Brady heard someone talking before the world went black.

“How may we serve you, my King?”


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _prompt_
> 
> _Sam wasn’t just a meatheaded hunter before he took the throne. What many of his enemies fail to understand is that one of his deadliest weapons is his intellect._

_Too soft. Naive. Innocent. Pure._ **_Hunter._ **

These were all things the demons said about Sam, the twenty-six-year-old boy king of Hell. They knew he was prophesied to be the rightful ruler of Hell, but they hadn’t expected something like compassionate Sam, fresh out of college and with only four years of hunting under his belt, not counting his time hunting as a child. 

They were disappointed to say the least. And their disappointment manifested in complaints and anger and restlessness, doubting if Sam was the right king for them and if they shouldn’t just overthrow him and return Hell to its “former glory.”

Sam had other ideas. 

He stood at the end of the narrow corridor, the other avenues of the maze stretching out on either side and behind him. One of his opponents, a moderately powerful demon, was smirking where he stood in the corridor in front of Sam. He thought that he had Sam caught, that Sam would go down easy because he looked soft and his only weapon in this game was his demon blade. 

His mistake. 

Sam darted to the left, hearing the demon’s footsteps start up behind him and his ears tuning in to another pair off to his right. He didn’t smirk, but he ran faster, until he was a shadow turning the corners to the demon behind him and the footsteps to his right were running directly at him, smug and confident. 

A slight change in speed, two steps, three, and on the fourth Sam threw himself against the wall, hearing the wet sound of the blade of the demon that had been behind him sinking into the vessel’s flesh of the demon that had been in front of him, both heads turning towards him in surprise. Sam smirked and pushed himself off the wall, thrusting his demon knife in first one demon’s back, then the other and running away before the light faded from their eyes. 

The next demon went down, and then the next, until the maze was littered with corpses of demons and Sam stood at the center, the only reason he was out of breath because he was running, not because he had to do any physical fighting. No, most of the demons had died because Sam had cornered them without them realizing, or he’d surprised them or shocked them so they were an easy kill. That was the thing about demons; they focused on Sam’s brute strength and forgot that he could kill them just as easily with his mind as with his body. 

He raised his chin, seeing the audience of demons sat above the maze, and spread his arms wide, a dark look in his eyes, because maybe he’d spent a little too long killing some of the demons and maybe some were lacking in a few liters of blood. 

“Do you doubt me now?” he asked, voice raised slightly but still reaching out across the demons. He smiled, but there wasn’t any humor in it and he still had a blade in one hand, the demons noted, this time with the touch of fear they should’ve had all along. 

The arena was silent and Sam glanced over as the demon who’d built it waved his hand and the maze walls fell, vanishing into smoke and revealing the doorway out, leaving a smooth, flat concrete floor stained with blood and all twenty-four demons Sam had killed. Sam felt the restraints on his magic fall away, dissolving and letting the demonic energy rush through him, burning and shifting beneath his skin, reacting to the hundreds of demons around him. 

Sam’s arms dropped and he looked around at the stadium, before walking out, not saying anything more. 

They’d figure it out, and if they didn’t, he’d be more than happy to show them again. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm starting a blog on Tumblr that is similar to prompt fight, but it's for Sam Winchester in general. You can find it [here.](https://fresh-fruit-prompts.tumblr.com/) The first prompt posts April 1st.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _prompt_
> 
> _Sam is a good hunter. But when he becomes King of Hell, there are suddenly Demon Princes to deal with, Archdevils to take control over, and whole legions to command. A knife or a gun is not enough; it takes skill, cunning and absolute ruthlessness to defend the Throne of Hell.  
>  Sam needs to assassinate the most powerful general of his legion to gain full control over his troops. Violence alone is not enough: He needs stealth, intelligence, and a despicably clever plan._
> 
> **warnings: mention of Lucifer, mass demon death**

Sam Winchester was possibly the scariest person Mekhi had ever met, and Mekhi commanded legions of demons in Hell’s army.

He knew that Sam was a damn good hunter; the stories went around in Hell, in Heaven, and on Earth, of the Winchester brothers. Two of the best hunters in the country - the world, possibly, though the American hunters didn’t know much of the rest of the world’s hunters. The brothers were something close to a myth, if the world hadn’t almost ended enough times for the hunters, and enough demons exorcised for Hell, to know they were very real. Mekhi wasn’t afraid of Sam Winchester.

He should have been.

Mekhi stares up into Sam’s hazel-green eyes, which are soft and kind and which Mekhi really wishes were hard and unforgiving like they should be. He would admire the colors that shifted in his eyes - really, it was rare that humans had such changing eye colors - if they weren’t focused so unerringly on him and if Sam wasn’t wearing that easy smile that reminded Mekhi of a knife.

“Your Majesty,” he says, and swallows down the fear, “I didn’t expect to see you here.” He keeps his composure, keeps his posture, because after centuries of commanding demons, you learn that you never show fear in either your voice or your body. In your mind, too, if you could swing it, but that isn’t really working for Mekhi right now.

“Hello, Mekhi,” Sam says, voice calm, and Mekhi feels ice run down his vessel’s spine. He’d seen Sam execute other demons that had betrayed him, seen them light up red and gold and their screams echo through the hall. He’d also seen this same light smile on Sam’s face, same gentle voice, at those execution ceremonies. This only ended one way, unless Mekhi could talk himself out of it, and he didn’t feel very capable of that at the moment.

Not when he’d hidden so well, not when he has a legion of demons waiting to march on Sam’s army outside at this very moment, and here Sam is. Here Sam is, delaying his plans ( _ maybe he knew)  _ and leaving his troops waiting ( _ he couldn’t know, that would be the end of him and his army)  _ and Mekhi is unable to do anything but wait until he thought it was fit for him to leave. Wait, and shove down the fear and anxiety, and somehow entertain the King he had been planning to overthrow in a few hours.

Sam’s smile is still there as he picks up one of the statuettes on Mekhi’s map - a map table he’d laid out according to Sam’s orders, a small piece of the curtain he’d made to hide what he’d been doing. Sam looks up at him, twirling the statuette in his fingers.

“How can I help you, Your Majesty?” Mekhi says, voice steady from years of practice. Sam puts the statuette down and turns fully to him.

“I only came to see how your troops are doing,” Sam says, and Mekhi both lets out a breath and can’t get another one in, because that’s such an innocent question but Mekhi has the wrong answer for it. The truthful answer is wrong, he knows, and it’s too late now. Sam came at the wrong time; any other time, his troops would have been in Sam’s army where they were supposed to be, but now they’re camped out across from it waiting to march and Mekhi has no time to move them.

Funny that a demon should be running out of time, Mekhi thinks bitterly and a little hysterically as Sam smiles and walks toward the door. He thinks that Sam is going to leave, but he knows better than that, knows Sam never leaves loose ends. Not as a hunter, not as the King of Hell. 

“Take a walk with me,” Sam offers, deceptively innocent. Mekhi nods and walks beside Sam. He has the feeling he’s walking to his death, but Sam hasn’t given any indication that he knows what Mekhi has been up to and he hasn’t asked any questions that would suggest that either.

Somehow, that only makes the feeling grow worse, the air grow heavier and Mekhi grow colder.

“How have you been doing?” Sam asks. Mekhi relaxes slightly - only slightly, because the air is too tense for a  _ how are you feeling  _ and a  _ hope you’re doing well  _ kind of conversation.

“I’ve been doing well, Your Majesty. Nothing much has been happening,” Mekhi replies.

“That’s good,” Sam says. “Any complications with your troops?”

Now Mekhi’s breath doesn’t catch, because he can’t show that he’s afraid of being found out, and his voice doesn’t shake as he answers  _ no, Your Majesty,  _ but he wishes it could, wishes he didn’t have to hide from someone as terrifying as Sam. 

Sam nods, and Mekhi doesn’t notice as they take a left and then a right, meandering over all-too-familiar hills in Hell’s cracked-earth landscape, because he’s focused on his thoughts and the ground and Sam.

Sam is silent, they’re just walking, and Mekhi doesn’t notice how wrong this is. He’s glad that he isn’t being asked any more questions, he’s relaxing more. He doesn’t notice the purpose to Sam’s steps, or why they were still taking a walk if Sam had nothing more to say to him.

He lifts his head to ask Sam how he’s been doing, but the words catch in his throat. They get twisted into a shocked breath as he sees troops -  _ his  _ troops - scattered in front of him. Scattered across the ground, all dead, and some part of Mekhi says that their vessels are dead, not the demons, but another, larger part ( _ and Sam’s smile has turned sharp now, he notices out of the corner of his eye)  _ says that Sam is more thorough than that. The demons are dead, Mekhi knows with a sinking feeling, and soon he will be too, as Sam turns to him, that smile still on his face.

“You’re very good at hiding, Mekhi,” Sam says conversationally. “Even my resources as King were stretched trying to find out what you have been up to. You almost forced me to consult my brother for this, because he’s the only hunter I would trust with this. A very, very small amount of trust, because his track record with me being King of Hell is not all that impressive, but still more trust than I give most hunters. More trust than I give most anyone, really. Even if Dean may have needed a bit of persuading.”

Mekhi stays still. Lets Sam start a slow circle around him. Waits for the feeling of a blade through his abdomen. Or maybe Sam will slowly pull on his essence, tear it out of the vessel over the course of a few minutes, Mekhi thinks. He doesn’t shiver at the word  _ persuading,  _ doesn’t think of Sam’s extensive knowledge on that ( _ courtesy of Lucifer,  _ he thinks, and the thought of the archangel being angry at him doesn’t scare him quite as much as the thought - or, rather, the feeling right now - of Sam being angry at him).

“Have you ever read about Machiavelli’s Prince?” Sam asks, and the question is so innocent that it almost startles Mekhi into replying instantly, before he realizes that he’s dancing on a knife’s edge here and Sam has the power to push him over. He shakes his head, and Sam smiles.

“Didn’t think you would,” he says, voice somewhere behind Mekhi and off to his right. “The essentials of it are that a Prince, or a King in this case, must be firm but fair. If you cannot be loved by your people, then you must be feared, but feared in such a way that you don’t inspire hate.” Sam gives a small laugh as he circles around to Mekhi’s front and stops, turning to face him. “I didn’t know in the Stanford university library how much that book would be useful in my future.”

His eyes flick to Mekhi’s, and Mekhi has the thought that this is a villain monologue. Except it isn’t, because villain monologues allow the side characters to come in and rescue the hero, and Mekhi isn’t a hero nor is he being rescued. Sam would not allow that; if he knew that there was a flaw in his plan that allowed for it, he wouldn’t be monologuing. Mekhi would be on the ground already, in wherever demons go in the afterlife.

The thought reinforces the sick feeling in Mekhi’s stomach, the certainty that here is where he dies.

“I consider this fair,” Sam says, meeting Mekhi’s eyes. “Don’t you?” he asks, and the words are edged with a question.  _ How long do you want your death to be,  _ Sam asks silently.

Mekhi nods, his voice gone. Sam continues anyway. “I can’t leave exceptions, Mekhi. This is what happens when you defy me. I’m not being cruel, I’m not being unfair. I’m simply doing what has to be done, and that is securing my throne.”

Mekhi nods again. He almost believes it, but Sam looks almost remorseful and Mekhi catches on the word  _ almost. _ Almost believes, almost remorseful. He was almost successful.

Sam’s eyes start burning an unholy gold.


End file.
